England coach Stuart Lancaster squad's problems run deeper than they care to admit following defeat to Aussies

This England squad is a brotherhood of eager and honest lads who love the
shirt and would run off a cliff if their coaches asked them to. All the more
worrying, then, that so many told themselves that the decisive error in
Saturday’s 20-14 defeat at Twickenham was a failure “to finish Australia
off”.

Caught short: Chris Ashton is hauled down before reaching the tryline at TwickenhamPhoto: REUTERS

This delusional thinking cast the Wallabies as a wounded animal that just needed one last kick to the heart. How any side can suggest this after failing to score a single point in the second half would count as a mystery if it were not for England’s excessive faith in drills and regimentation.

Their belief is that if they apply sufficient physical force through moves practised on the training ground then the opposition are bound to yield.

But southern-hemisphere teams, whose annual championship is of a far higher technical standard than the Six Nations, are not willing to defer to an England side who lack the experience and flexibility of thought to be able to impose their high ideals. Often they even lack the power.

England’s pack were shut down by Australia’s eight and in Michael Hooper the Wallabies possessed the kind of nightmare-causing back-row forward that the English culture too rarely produces.

So there was no basis for the inferior team arguing that the superior team just needed “finishing off”, despite all the rumbling English pressure of the last 20 minutes, which was undermined by poor decision making, handling errors and momentum-sapping penalty concessions.

Chris Ashton said the mission was to “get into that space and find that hole”. He added: “You see it and it just breaks down. It’s one bad pass or we end up giving a penalty away. It’s difficult when you see space.

“I’m out there complaining a lot of the time. They offered us more than enough opportunities, we just didn’t take them.”

England have now lost three of four Tests against South Africa and Australia and drawn the other one. If they repeat Saturday’s performance for the next two weekends they will lose to the Springboks and All Blacks as well.

Three defeats in four autumn internationals would shred Stuart Lancaster’s manifesto of building a new England based on youth and togetherness.

Toby Flood, England’s fly-half, is one of the most articulate and naturally talented of Lancaster’s first-team core.

After the match, you could hear him veer between candour and the party line. “We weren’t good enough,” he admitted. “It’s about not dropping the ball, not turning the ball over, not making silly mistakes, poor reads and bits and pieces.

“There were opportunities there that we missed out on, to be smarter and more clinical, and that comes from experience. A lot of guys were out there from the second, fifth, ninth time. That comes with time and evolution but you don’t get a lot of time in Test rugby and we’ve got to be better at what we’re doing.”

But the sense is that England, in their ludicrous purple kit, are starting to resemble an NFL American football team with a playbook and an unstoppable urge to smash into the opposition rather than search for space.

Flood slipped into the language of a jargon-ridden coaching seminar: “You have to grow it over time, you have to layer it on, and we’re still at an embryonic stage of our attack. We just need to rep them in the week and get it right and guys will crack on from there.”

There is a dire shortage of panache and ingenuity in England’s back line play, especially at centre, where Brad Barritt and Manu Tuilagi are like a couple of Mike Tindalls playing crash-ball and ignoring opportunities outside.

One head-down, contact-seeking charge by Tuilagi when Ashton was free out wide drew a mild rebuke from the England winger, who has not scored a try in 10 Tests.

Ashton said: “Manu usually gets over the gain line so his first instinct is to do that, so hopefully the more I can play outside him the more he gets used to me, and he’ll recognise the difference between running and passing.”

Ashton noticed how subdued the Twickenham crowd grew as their team began to appear more and more like a good Six Nations side who will not cope in their present “embryonic” state with the southern hemisphere giants. “I thought exactly the same. It was very quiet but it’s up to us to change that.”

Tom Wood, another big, strong, committed English lad, said that it was up the players to “cross the gap and win the engagement”.

But there is a bit more than that to modern rugby. The game cries out also for speed of thought, ingenuity, skill.

On the bad days, like this one, the English culture appears clumsy and error-strewn. Best not add delusional thinking to that list.